John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion

[76] meeting of two hundred thousand of her people. Before the surging crowds that filled the streets, and drowned all noises in their huzzas for the Union, the New York Herald displayed the stars and stripes, and changed its editorials from a tone of sneering lament to a fierce and incessant war-cry. Every prominent individual in the whole North was called or came voluntarily to prompt espousal of the Union cause by public letter or speech. Ex-President Buchanan, ex-President Pierce, Edward Everett, General Cass, Archbishop Hughes, Mayor Fernando Wood, John A. Dix, Wendell Phillips, Robert J. Walker, Wm. M. Evarts, Edward D. Baker, David Dudley Field, John J. Crittenden, Caleb Gushing, Hannibal Hamlin, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and radicals, natives and foreigners, Catholics and Protestants, Maine and Oregon, all uttered a common call to their countrymen to come to the defence of the Constitution, the Government, and the Union. Of all these recognized public leaders, however, the most energetic and powerful, next to Lincoln, was Stephen A. Douglas, who in the late election had received 1,128,049 Northern votes, and 163,525 Southern votes for President. As already mentioned, he had, in a bold Senate speech, announced himself as opposed to a policy of coercion. But the wanton bombardment of Sumter exhausted his party patience, and stirred his patriotic blood to fresher and healthier impulses. On Sunday, April 14th, when the proclamation had not yet been many hours written and signed, he sought his lifelong political antagonist, Abraham Lincoln, now President of the United States, and, in a long, confidential interview, assured him of his readiness to join him in unrelenting warfare against rebellion. The next morning's telegraphic despatches gave the country an authorized notice of the patriotic alliance. In a few days he started to his home in Illinois;